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Beauty As Harmony of the Soul: the Aesthetic of the Stoics

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Beauty As Harmony of the Soul: the Aesthetic of the Stoics McMahon, Jennifer A. 2009. Beauty as Harmony of the Soul: the Aesthetic of the Stoics. In M. Rossetto, M. Tsianikas, G. Couvalis and M. Palaktsoglou (Eds.) "Greek Research in Australia: Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial International Conference of Greek Studies, Flinders University June 2009". Flinders University Department of Languages - Modern Greek: Adelaide, 54-63. JENNIFER A. MCMAHON Beauty as harmony of the soul: the aesthetic of the Stoics Jennifer A. McMahon Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have con- tributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Sto- ics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s aesthetics. I will reveal an interpretation of the aesthetic of the Stoics which has more explanatory power for the history of aesthetic theory than a history of aesthetic theory which leaves out the Stoics. 1. Introduction: the Stoic conception of a human being In this paper I set myself two tasks. The first is to identify what I take to be the Stoic aesthetic. The second task is to argue that this aesthetic influenced Kant’s notion of disinterested pleasure through Cicero’s adoption in On Duties of Panaetius’ theory of decorum. As Kant’s Critique of Judgment is indisputably the most influential aesthetic theory there is, in achieving this I will have shown the important role of the Stoic aesthetic to the history of aesthetic theory. The Stoic attitude to emotion has been rehabilitated by Nancy Sherman as she uncovers textual evidence in Diogenes Laertius that they did not promote lack of feeling but rather emphasised the importance of good feeling in habituating one to a state of virtue (Sherman, 1997:117). This paper builds upon this view by identifying in Cicero’s adoption of Panaetius’ notion of moral beauty, an aesthetic underpinning to Stoic ethics, an orientation which can be understood to inform Kant’s aesthetics and certain strands in twentieth century aesthetics. The standard view is that the Stoics believed that the good life was built upon the exercise of reason alone and the total extirpation of the passions (Gill, 2003:51). In contrast, in the light of Panaetius’ notion of decorum and the cognitive aspect to emotion taken by the Stoics according to Diogenes Laertius, the expelling of the passions, the nature of ethical development 54 Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au BE AUTY as HARMONY OF THE SOUL: THE AEstHETIC OF THE STOICS and the nature of rationality are not as straight forward in the Stoics as the standard view suggests. 1.1. Freedom from the passions The Stoics implicitly treat the passions not as irreducible aspects of experience but as responses built upon certain beliefs or interpretations of events. The Stoics (in particular Chrysippus, Panaetius, Seneca and Epictetus) saw passions as resting on an evaluation of external events. When they taught that passions should be expurgated or extirpated, they did not mean that we do this through some kind of expression, such as venting emotions with the purpose of a kind of catharsis. Nor did they believe that one should suppress or bottle up emotions and passions. Instead, as reflected in Seneca’s essay “On Anger”, the Stoic typically thought we could eradicate our disposi- tion to passion (Seneca, Essays, bk 1). To eradicate our disposition to passion is only possible if passions are somehow mediated by beliefs. The orthodox Stoic view of emotions was that they depend on the rational assent of the person involved but that, once formed, they can outrun rational control (Inwood, 2004:88). For the Stoics, passions are not unavoidable or inevitable responses to external stimuli. Instead they involve a cer- tain interpretation or construal of events. This is where one exercises control. And one does this in such a way that no passions are aroused. F or the Stoic, passion refers to feel- ings or emotions that are out of one’s control. However, eradicating passion does not necessarily mean that all feeling is to be eradicated as is sometimes rather hastily as- sumed to be the Stoic orientation to life. There is still room for a no- tion of good feeling as Sherman ar- gues (Sherman, 1997:117). I will return to this possibility later. In any case, eradicating passions en- tirely from the soul (and cultivat- ing good feeling for that matter) Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle in an illustration from a medieval manuscript 55 Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au JENNIFER A. MCMAHON required developing a certain kind of orientation to the events of life. This brings us to the second point: 1.2. Moral Development I n order to extirpate passion from the soul one would develop a certain orientation to the world. This might be achieved by either of two ways, only one of which the Stoics endorsed. According to the first alternative, one might develop the appropriate orientation through habit and training. For example, a child’s carers would model the correct orientation to the events of the world through their behaviour and would reward a similar orientation when observed in the behaviour of the child. This would promote the internalisation of the acceptable patterns of behaviour in the child to such a degree that eventually adopting what was considered the appropriate behaviour would occur without conscious reflection or decision making. The required dispo- sition or orientation would take root and could be understood as the endorsement and entrenchment of a value system. In this case, extirpating passion from the soul would be a no-brainer! In contrast, according to the second alternative and the one that the Stoics did endorse, the required orientation involved an intellectual process. According to the Stoic view, one engaged in a conscious reasoning about the world and its events such that no passions or emotions were aroused. The Stoic alternative was grounded in a conception of the human being according to which in our true state we are not crea- tures of habit or simply creatures of a kind whose behaviour and instincts could be trained by rewards. Instead, we are beings whose psychology is unified by rationality. I t is important to note that this approach does not rule out a role for good feeling. F or example, over the course of one’s life, by endorsing certain interpretations over oth- ers due to the harmony or order that ensues, one is cultivating a good feeling towards certain interpretations and reinforcing a good feeling towards order and harmony. I n this case, the good feeling is so defined due to its link to reason and principle. The possibility that good feeling could motivate reasonable beliefs and actions would not be incompatible with the Stoic view that ethical development was brought about through rational means. That is, giving feeling or certain kinds of emotion a role in ethical development need not be incompatible with the Stoic’s intellectual concept of the human being. 2. A Stoic Aesthetic 2.1. The Stoics on pleasure The Stoic rejection of passion did not mean the rejection of happiness or joy. It was simply that the only lasting satisfaction for a human being was the satisfaction of holding in one’s mind a conception of one’s life as good and well lived. According to 56 Archived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au BE AUTY as HARMONY OF THE SOUL: THE AEstHETIC OF THE STOICS Seneca: “[T]he happy life is to have ... a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good”. And a little later: “A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by con- stant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys” (Seneca, Essays, bk.7, iv. 1-3-v.2). On the other hand, the Stoics did regard “pleasure” with contempt because they associated it with the sensuous. For example, Seneca: “Pleasure is a poor and petty thing. N o value should be set on it: it’s something we share with dumb animals” (Seneca, Letters, CXXIII). Yet, we should not take this to mean they were promoting a dull and joyless life. On the contrary, to direct our actions towards a happy life implicitly motivated their position regarding the pre-eminence of virtue. The Stoic believed that only by pursuing virtue for its own sake could we achieve a happy and fulfilling life. Seneca again: [O]nce we have driven away all that excites or affrights us, there ensures unbroken tran- quillity and enduring freedom; for when pleasures and fears have been banished, then, in place of all that is trivial and fragile and harmful just because of the evil it works, there comes upon us first a boundless joy that is firm and unalterable, then peace and harmony of the soul (Seneca, Essays, bk 7, iii. 2–4) [author’s italics]. The Stoics were contemptuous of pleasure but only what we would now consider a very narrow set of pleasures. In fact, Monroe Beardsley finds two kinds of pleasure in the Stoics: the pleasure (hedone) that “is an irrational movement of the soul” and the pleasure (chara) which is “a rational elevation of the soul” (Beardsley, 1975: 70–71).
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